Bankers still earn too much for simply turning up to work to handle other people’s money, according to John Cryan, the joint boss of Deutsche Bank.

British-born Cryan, who took over as the co-chief executive of Germany’s biggest bank in July, included his own pay deal in his criticism of rewards more akin to those earned by self-made tycoons. He also said that, seven years after the financial meltdown, traders were rewarded too quickly for profits that could evaporate.

“Many people in the sector still believe they should be paid entrepreneurial wages for turning up to work with a regular salary, a pension and probably a healthcare scheme and playing with other people’s money,” Cryan said at a conference in Frankfurt on Monday. “There doesn’t seem to be anything entrepreneurial about that except the compensation structures,” he added, according to Bloomberg News.

Cryan made his comments weeks after warning that staff bonuses must reflect the cost of Deutsche Bank’s fines for past misconduct and as bankers plot to extract the biggest payout from their firms in the new-year bonus round. Traders, in particular, are still paid for short-term profits that are subject to clawback if their deals go awry.

“We should reflect on people’s contribution over a much longer period of time than one year,” he said, adding that there is a “promise to pay first and then be in the ridiculous position where the baby’s been given the candy and you’ve got the difficulty of taking it away”.

Jason Kennedy, who heads the recruitment firm Kennedy Group in London, said Cryan’s remarks were a warning shot to staff. “With continuous and unforeseen fines, their first priority is to build capital rather than pay their employees. By saying what he’s said, Christmas has been cancelled,” he told Bloomberg.

The bank warned in October that it would lose more than €6bn (£4.4bn) – a record loss – in the third quarter of its financial year because of large impairment charges. The bank also set aside €1.2bn for litigation costs. Like other banks, Deutsche was caught up in the Libor-rigging scandal and it faces a separate investigation in Switzerland for alleged price fixing in the precious metal market.

Deutsche Bank has not disclosed its pay deal for Cryan, who was an investment banker at SG Warburg and UBS for 24 years before leaving UBS in 2011. Pay for his predecessor Anshun Jain and co-chief executive Juergen Fitschen fell 11% in 2014 but was still a hefty €6.66m.

Cryan said he doubted whether people worked that much harder for the promise of a bonus and included himself in that group. “I have no idea why I was offered a contract with a bonus in it because I promise you I will not work any harder or any less hard in any year, in any day because someone is going to pay me more or less.”

He added: “I sit on trading floors and wonder what drives people. I don’t fully empathise with anyone who says they turn up to work and work harder because they can be paid a little bit more, but that may be a personal view. I’ve never been able to understand the way additional excess riches drive people to behave differently.”

Banks also have too many employees with grand titles such as managing director, Cryan said.

“There is some value to carrying a fancy card if you are a banker because it is true that you get a better quality meeting with a client if you sound grand,” he said, adding that for traders, their ability and not their title is important. “The title is never used in the context of the day-to-day business.”